11 free proxy sites compared. A 640,600-proxy study found only 34.5% ever worked. See the risks and test any proxy free on TMIO.
A free proxy list looks generous. Thousands of IP addresses, refreshed every few minutes, nothing to pay. Then you paste them into a script and almost none of them connect. A 30-month study of 640,600 free proxies found that only 34.5% were active even once. The other 65.5% never worked at all.
That is the catch with free proxy sites in 2026. The phrase covers two different tools, and both cost you something other than money. Below we compare the best free proxy sites in each group, say where each one falls short, and show you a free way to test any proxy before you trust it with your traffic.
BEST FREE PROXY SITES AT A GLANCE
- Free proxy sites come in two types: web proxies you open in a browser tab, and proxy lists you load into an app or script.
- For quick browsing, ProxySite.com, hide.me, 4everProxy and CroxyProxy are the usual picks. Do not log in to anything important through them.
- For testing and scraping practice, ProxyScrape, Geonode and FreeProxy.World offer big lists, but most entries will be dead or slow.
- For something steadier, the free tiers from Webshare and Oxylabs are small but private to your account.
- Whichever you pick, check the IP first with the free VPN and proxy detector https://tracemyiponline.com/vpn-detector.
WHAT IS A FREE PROXY SITE?
A proxy site relays your traffic through its own server, so the website you visit sees the proxy's IP address instead of yours. People use the term for two different things.
A web proxy is a page. You open it, paste a URL, and the page fetches the site for you. There is nothing to install and nothing to configure.
A proxy list is a table of raw IP addresses and ports. You copy an entry into a browser extension, an app or a script. It takes more effort and suits developers, testers and anyone automating a task.
To see what a site learns about you before and after, run your address through the IP Lookup tool first. We use it in the test section below.
WHAT RESEARCHERS FOUND ABOUT FREE PROXIES
The best evidence here is academic, not commercial. In 2024 a team led by Naif Mehanna presented "Free Proxies Unmasked" at the NDSS MADWeb workshop. They collected free proxies from 11 providers and tested them every day for 30 months.
Their conclusion was blunt. The researchers wrote that "the use of free web proxies poses significant risks to users' privacy and security."
- Naif Mehanna, researcher and lead author of Free Proxies Unmasked (NDSS MADWeb 2024)
Of 640,600 proxies, 16,923 altered the content passing through them. The authors also say many free proxies likely come from compromised devices, not from servers someone chose to offer. Most sat in the US or China.
BEST FREE WEB PROXIES (INSTANT, NO SETUP)
These open in a browser tab and work in seconds. They share one trade: convenience now, less control over your privacy later.
1. PROXYSITE.COM
ProxySite has been around since 2001, which makes it one of the oldest names here. It runs in the browser, uses SSL between you and the proxy, and copes with YouTube and Facebook. It suits quick, low stakes browsing. The catch is logging: free web proxies can record what you open, so keep logins and personal data away from it.
2. HIDE.ME WEB PROXY
Hide.me is better known as a VPN company, and its free web proxy is a stripped down sample of that. It is built to avoid leaking your real address through WebRTC, a common weakness in browser proxies. The server list is short, it does not encrypt your whole connection the way the VPN does, and some streaming sites still block it.
3. 4EVERPROXY
4everProxy lets you choose a server location and browse without an account. Ads pay for it, and there is a paid VPN upsell. It works well enough for video and social sites. The IPs are shared datacenter addresses, which stricter sites flag quickly, so expect CAPTCHAs.
4. CROXYPROXY
CroxyProxy earns its reputation on script heavy sites like YouTube, Gmail and Facebook, where simpler proxies break. You can pick a server location and share a permalink. Its weak spot is the clone problem: many third party domains resell or rebrand it, so make sure you are on the real site before you type anything. It also shows ads.
HOW THE FOUR COMPARE
- ProxySite.com: shared IPs, no account. Best for plain public pages.
- hide.me: WebRTC leak protection, few locations. Best for light browsing.
- 4everProxy: location picker, ad supported. Best for casual video and social sites.
- CroxyProxy: handles heavy sites, many lookalike mirrors. Best for YouTube and Gmail.
Our view: CroxyProxy for video, hide.me for everything else, and no logins on any of them. All four typically exit through datacenter IPs. The ISP field in IP Lookup will name a hosting company if so.
BEST FREE PROXY LISTS AND FREE TIERS (FOR DEVELOPERS)
Lists give you IP and port pairs for scrapers, test scripts and browser extensions. They split into public lists anyone can read and free tiers from commercial providers.
5. PROXYSCRAPE
ProxyScrape publishes a large list of public HTTP, SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 proxies and gives you a free API to pull it into your own tools. In a 2026 benchmark by Databay (a proxy vendor, so weigh that), ProxyScrape was one of only two free lists with a usable share of working entries, at 36.7% alive. That is the good news. It also means nearly two thirds were dead.
6. GEONODE
Geonode lists a very large pool of free proxies with filters for country, port, protocol and speed, and it sells a paid network on top. The interface is friendly for beginners, though many advanced tools sit behind paid plans.
7. FREEPROXY.WORLD
FreeProxy.World is a searchable public database you can filter by country, protocol and anonymity level. It is handy when you need a proxy in a specific country. Quality swings widely by location.
8. HIDEMY.NAME
HideMy.name covers dozens of countries and keeps checking each entry for ping, speed and uptime, which helps you spot dead ones faster. Exporting the list needs a paid plan.
9. WEBSHARE FREE PLAN
Webshare's free plan gives you a small private pool, about 10 datacenter proxies and 1 GB of traffic a month at the time of writing, with no card required. Because the IPs belong to your account instead of the whole internet, they usually last longer than public ones. They are datacenter only, and the limits are small.
10. OXYLABS FREE PROXIES
Oxylabs offers a free test pool of five US datacenter IPs with 5 GB of monthly traffic and HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 support. You need an account, and there is no geographic variety. It is a decent way to try a commercial network before paying. Free tier limits change often, so check the provider's page first.
BEFORE AND AFTER: WHAT A WEBSITE SEES
A proxy changes your location. It also changes how you look. Here is what a lookup typically shows with and without a free datacenter proxy. The addresses are placeholders from reserved documentation ranges, so run your own check to see real results.
Before the proxy:
- IP address: 203.0.113.45
- Location: New York, United States
- ISP: Example Broadband
- Proxy or VPN flag: none
After the proxy:
- IP address: 198.51.100.77
- Location: Frankfurt, Germany
- ISP: Example Hosting GmbH
- Proxy or VPN flag: proxy detected
The location moved, which is what you wanted. But the ISP now names a hosting company and detection tools flag the address. That mismatch is why many sites answer with a CAPTCHA or a block.
ARE FREE PROXY SITES SAFE? THE 2026 NUMBERS
For anything you care about, no. Three data sets point the same way.
- The NDSS study tracked 640,600 free proxies for 30 months. Only 34.5% were active at least once, and 16,923 altered content in transit.
- Databay's 2026 benchmark tested 2,911 proxies from seven free lists. Its own list led at 63.9% alive, ProxyScrape followed at 36.7%, every other list fell below 21%, and the bottom three sat under 8%.
- A Proxmint test of 62,541 proxies pulled from public GitHub lists found 2,236 alive, about 4%. The live ones had a median latency near 2,900 ms and 44% uptime.
Databay and Proxmint both sell proxies, so their motives are mixed. The direction still matches the independent academic work. The practical risks follow from it:
- Plain HTTP traffic passes through in readable form, so the operator sees everything on pages that do not use HTTPS.
- Operators can log your traffic or inject ads and scripts into the pages you load.
- Shared IPs are often blacklisted, which means blocks and CAPTCHAs.
- Lists go stale within hours, so a proxy that worked this morning may be dead tonight.
Our rule: stick to HTTPS pages, and keep logins, payments and personal data out of any free proxy.
FREE PROXY SITES BY LOCATION: WHAT CHANGES FOR YOU
Your risks shift a little depending on where you browse from.
FREE PROXY SITES IN CALIFORNIA
California residents have CCPA rights to know what businesses collect and to ask for deletion. Those rights are hard to use against an anonymous free proxy operator with no company name and no address. Marketers who check California prices or ads through free proxies also hit blocks, since datacenter IPs get filtered quickly.
FREE PROXY SITES IN NEW YORK
Much New York browsing happens on cafe, office and transit Wi-Fi, and a free web proxy feels like a quick fix. It is a thin one. A web proxy only covers the tab you loaded, so other apps keep using the open network, and you add a second party who can see your traffic. On public networks a reputable VPN does more, and our VPN check guide shows how to confirm yours works.
FREE PROXY SITES IN LONDON
UK users often reach for free proxies to get past geo-blocks on US streaming or the age checks that followed the Online Safety Act. Results are patchy, because streaming services block known datacenter ranges and shared free IPs are the easiest to spot. Dodging a service's rules can also breach its terms.
FREE PROXY SITES IN TORONTO
Canadians care where their data goes, and laws like PIPEDA and Quebec's Law 25 reflect that. Most free proxies sit in the US or China, so a Toronto session may exit through a country you did not pick. Check the exit country with IP Lookup before assuming it matches the promise.
HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT FREE PROXY SITE
Start with the job. To open one page right now, use a web proxy. For an IP and port in a script or extension, use a list or a free tier. Then check how often the list refreshes, which protocols it supports (HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4, SOCKS5), whether you can filter by country, and whether each entry shows uptime or a last checked time.
The best free proxy sites are rarely the ones with the biggest lists. The Databay results above show it: list size told you very little about how many entries worked.
Also know when to stop being free. If you handle accounts, payments, client data or scraping at volume, pay for a provider with real support. A free proxy is a tool for throwaway jobs.
HOW TO TEST A FREE PROXY BEFORE YOU USE IT
- Open IP Lookup with no proxy on and note your IP, country and ISP.
- Connect through the proxy. For a web proxy, paste the IP Lookup address into it. For a list entry, set the IP and port in your browser or app.
- Reload IP Lookup. The IP and country should now be different. If your real IP still shows, the proxy is not working or it is leaking.
- Read the ISP field. A hosting company name means a datacenter IP, which many sites flag.
- Paste the proxy IP into the VPN and proxy detector to see whether it is flagged as a VPN, proxy or Tor exit.
- Run the same IP through the Blacklist Checker to see whether it appears on abuse lists.
- Open the Browser Fingerprint tool to see what your browser still exposes, such as timezone and language, because those can contradict the proxy's location.
Five minutes of testing saves you from the worst IPs. It will not tell you whether the operator is logging you, so the HTTPS rule still applies.
CONCLUSION
The best free proxy sites are fine for throwaway jobs: looking at a regional page, testing a script, learning how proxies behave. They are the wrong tool for logins, payments or anything that has to keep working. Pick the type that fits the job, test the IP before you trust it, and move to a paid provider when the work starts to matter.
Got a proxy IP you are unsure about? Paste it into TMIO's free VPN and proxy detector. No signup, no limits.
Related guides: VPN check: is yours actually working?, What is my public IP? and DNS lookup 101. If you use proxies on Discord or Instagram, see how those platforms see your address in our guides to finding an IP address on Discord and on Instagram.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What is the best free proxy site?
No single site wins for every job. For browser use, ProxySite.com, hide.me and CroxyProxy are common choices. For lists, ProxyScrape, Geonode and FreeProxy.World are the usual starting points. Pick by the task, then test the IP.
What is the difference between a web proxy and a proxy list?
A web proxy runs in your browser: paste a URL and go. A proxy list gives you raw IPs and ports that you enter into an app, extension or script.
Are free proxy sites safe?
Not for sensitive activity. Operators can log traffic, inject ads, or run on compromised devices. A 2024 study found 16,923 content altering proxies among 640,600 tracked. Stick to HTTPS pages and keep logins out of it.
Do free proxies hide my IP address?
They hide it from the website you visit, but not from the proxy operator, who sees your real IP and your traffic.
Can I use free proxies for scraping?
You can try, but expect poor results. In the 2024 study only 34.5% of proxies were ever active, and a Proxmint test found about 4% of GitHub listed proxies alive. Many targets block them too.
What is the difference between free and paid proxies?
Paid proxies generally offer better uptime, cleaner IPs, faster speeds and support. Free ones are shared, short lived and more often flagged.
How do I check if a free proxy is working?
Compare your IP and country in IP Lookup with and without the proxy, then run the proxy IP through the VPN detector and blacklist checker. The steps above walk through it.
Is a free proxy the same as a VPN?
No. A proxy relays traffic for one app or tab, usually without encryption of its own. A VPN encrypts all traffic from your device. Our VPN check guide shows how to test yours.